Academic

The Church of England Speaks to the Relationship Between Law and Religion

Posted on February 04, 2008
The Church of England has been quite restive of late. For a long time a sleepy place, theologically speaking, it wore like an old shoe. No more it seems. The Church of England has become a much more interesting site of development of notions about law , religion and the state...

From Moral Obligation to International Law: Disclosure Systems, Markets and the Regulation of Multinational Corporations

Posted on January 31, 2008
The following paper, still in rough form, will be presented at the upcoming Symposium sponsored by the Georgetown Journal of International Law, Global Responsibility: Myth or Reality, to be held at Georgetown University Law School on Feb. 5, 2008:The topic of the 2008 Georgetown International Law Journal?s symposium is how international law can influence international business to work toward ?public? goals, for example reducing corruption and protecting the environment, when entering into international transactions...

The Holocaust in the Sambadrome: On the Protection of History and the Law

Posted on January 31, 2008
The media carried a story about a case decided on the eve of the annual Carnival celebration in Rio de Janeiro, See Rio Judge Bans Float on Holocaust, BBC Online, Feb. 1, 2008. The case involved the creation of a holocaust themed float (click here for picture as posted on the BBC site); Pedro Fonseca, Judge Bans Holocaust-Themed Carnival Floats, The Washington Post, Jan 31, 2008...

Democracy Part IX: Participation and Ethnic Rifts in Kenya

Posted on January 28, 2008
It is always amusing to be reminded of race hierarchies--especially when presented by an institution self consciously dedicated to a never ending proof that it is beyond such the internalization of such racialized systems of dominance and subordination, civilization and barbarity...

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Cuba and Brazil, Part I: Castro Lectures Lula da Silva

Posted on January 26, 2008
The relationship between Cuba and Brazil has always been close. The two nations do not share a language, but in many ways are more culturally compatible than they are with other states in Latin America. Brazil has become, in many ways, the engine of Latin America...

Symposium Introduction: Reifying Law--Rule of Law, Government, the State and Transnational Governance

Posted on January 21, 2008
What follows is an introduction to a Symposium to be published by the Penn State International Law Review (Vol. 25). The contributions to the symposium include the following papers:Larry Catá Backer, Reifying Law: Understanding Law Beyond the State, 25 PENN STATE INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW ? (forthcoming 2007)...

Values Morality and the Regulation of Transnational Economic Activity

Posted on January 19, 2008
The ethicist Randy Cohen, whose column appears weekly in the New York Times Magazine, recently wrote on the ethics of transborder economic transactions. Both the problem and the advice suggest the radical changes that have been occurring below the level of formal regulation in the development of ?community standards? for expected behavior amongst business enterprises...

On the Dynamism of American Political Culture

Posted on January 16, 2008
Politics in 19th century America can be divided into two great epochs, separated by that great Second American Revolution, the American Civil War. The period ending with the Civil War began after the First American Revolution and the adoption of the federal Constitution in 1789...

Values Economics and Theology: The Contribution of Catholic Social Thought and its Implications for Legal Regulatory Systems

Posted on January 12, 2008
At the Association of American Law Schools 2008 Annual Meeting, held this year in New York City, the Section on Socio-Economics presented its annual meeting program on Thursday, January 3, 2008 , co-Sponsored by the Sections on Jurisprudence, Minority Groups, Poverty Law, and Women in Legal Education...

Democracy Part VIII: Aristocratic Democracy and the Pakistan People's Party

Posted on December 30, 2007
On of the great things about democracy, we are told, is how it opens the avenues of political power to all members of the polity. Unlike aristocracies, monarchies or dictatorships, democracy (in whatever form practices) permits any citizen to strive for the highest elective offices of the state apparatus...

Nehru Inverted: Building a Model for Theocratic Constitutionalism in India.

Posted on December 23, 2007
People have sometimes looked to India as an example of the possibility of constructing a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-religious state from out of a collection of culturally related peoples. Europeans, in particular, have been looking to pluralist, multi-ethnic states, other than the United States, to overcome current objections to a European state based on the ?no demos? idea...

On Tony Blair's Conversion to Catholicism and the Religious Character of States

Posted on December 22, 2007
It appears that Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and sometime representative of the Global elite in its perpetual management of the war between the People of Israel and Islam, has left the Anglican Church to embrace the religion of his wife and children--Roman Catholicism...

The Surveillace State: Monitoring as Regulation, Information as Power

Posted on December 21, 2007
In many ways, the idea of the all powerful regulatory state has been passing into history. In its place is arising the monitoring state--a political organization whose functioning depends on its ability to observe, and through observation, manage the behavior of the community of its members, all of whom can be expected to behave because they have internalized the idea that they are constantly watched...

The Global Media and the Scripting of Fidel Castro's Exit

Posted on December 18, 2007
It is a truism of sorts, that the media has been engaging more and more directly in the creation of a reality they can then report as news. Since the late 18th century in the West, the media has been as much an active creator of news as its reporter...

Markets in Infants: The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, National Reform Efforts in Guatemala and Consumerism in the United States

Posted on December 11, 2007
Everything has always been for sale in the global entrepots that serve the master classes of global society--whether they be Western matrons or high ranking members of a nomenclatura, or the scions of plantation cultures in search of new amusements. The difference between this and earlier ages, perhaps, is the ease with with such transactions may occur...

Democracy Part VII: Constitutionalism and Indigenous Peoples in the Bolivian Constitution

Posted on December 09, 2007
Democracy has many fetish objects. I have suggested a number of them--elections (Democracy Part VI), voting (Democracy Part IV, Democracy Part II), factions (Democracy Part III), representation of the popular will (Democracy Part I) and public assembly and agitation (Democracy Part IV)...

On Freedom, the Individual, the Collective and the State: Gunnar Beck, Fitche and Kant on Freedom, Rights, and Law (2007)

Posted on December 08, 2007
The great questions of any age in transition are ontological. Yet, such questions are generally lost amidst the large number of academic technicians who, even as the foundations of social organization shift?and shift dramatically?continue to work feverishly to fill in all of the details of a system quickly moving from vigor to decadence and ultimately to irrelevance...

Hadaka no Mochitsuki: On Ritual, Tradition, and Law

Posted on December 06, 2007
The Asahi Shimbun reminded its English language readers of an important event that occurs on December 5 every year in Japan--Hadaka no Mochitsuki. Traditional 'Mochi' Makers Grin and Bare It, Asahi.com, Dec. 5, 2007.In a centuries-old ritual, young men hoist freshly made "mochi" to the ceiling of Sengenji temple in Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, on Tuesday in gratitude for a good rice harvest...

Democracy Part VI: Elections, Representative Democracy and Hong Kong

Posted on December 02, 2007
Full, free and direct elections. That is the essence of legitimate expressions of the political will of the masses. Its absence stokes the flames of arguments touching on "democratic deficits" (especially in Europe) and fueled the elitist political movements of the early part of the 20th century in the United States that eventually produced the 17th Amendment and the direct election of Senators (freeing them from the influence of machine--that is immigrant--driven local politics)...

Being a Part and Standing Apart: On the Culture of Law Faculties

Posted on November 26, 2007
What follows is a message delivered to the members of the Section on Minority Groups, Association of American Law School's as part of the 2007 Section Newsletter. It might be of interest to those who like to think about the institutional aspects of academic life...

Democracy Part IV: Managing Popular Expression and the Democratic Impulse in Sudan

Posted on November 25, 2007
Governance elites like to point to happy (unhappy and even indifferent) citizens voting as the essence of democratic organization. Larry Catá Backer, Democracy Part II, LAW AT THE END OF THE DAY, Nov. 16, 2007. And not just citizens of Anglo-European style democratic constitutional states...

Democracy, Part III: On Popular Participation in the Electoral Process in the United States

Posted on November 22, 2007
CityArthur Rimbaud I am an ephemeral and a not too discontented citizen of a metropolis considered modern, because all known taste has been avoided in the furnishings and the exterior of the houses, as well as in the lay out of the city. Here you would find no trace of any monument of superstition...

¿Por qué no te callas?

Posted on November 19, 2007
In an exchange little noted outside the Spanish and Portuguese speaking Americas, Hugo Chavez and King Juan Carlos of Spain engaged in a dialog of sorts at the Latin American Summit held in Santiago de Chile during the second week of November 2007. As reported in the English press, during a speech at the Latin American SummitMr Chavez, the outspoken Left-wing leader who called President George W...

Democracy Part II: Voting Among the Unruly Masses

Posted on November 16, 2007
The Mirror A hideous man enters and stares at his Reflection in the looking glass. ?Why do you look at yourself in the mirror, when your reflection never gives you any pleasure?? The hideous man replies: ?Sir, according to the immortal principles of 1789, all men have equal rights; therefore I have the right to look at myself; and whether with pleasure or with displeasure, concerns only my own feelings...

Democracy Part I: Democracy, Gesture and Power

Posted on November 11, 2007
The world has seen a fair amount of democracy over the last eight years. President Bush made it a cornerstone of his foreign policy. "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world...

Announcing Book: Harmonizing Law in an Era of Globalization: Convergence, Divergence, Resistence

Posted on November 05, 2007
I am happy to announce the publication of a collection of essays: Harmonizing Law in an Era of Globalization: Convergence, Divergence, Resistance, published by Carolina Academic Press. I include a short abstract and the opening materials of the book below...

The Treaty of Lisbon and E.U. Constitutionalism: Valery Giscard d'Estaing Makes a Good Point About Rule of Law and the Treaty of Lisbon

Posted on October 30, 2007
One has to admire the English press in general, and the BBC, in particular. They have never lost the culture of aggressive objectivity in the service of a cause that was their hallmark from the Second World War. It is a shame that it is more difficult to get consensus on an enemies list in this conflicted age...

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